Perfume Genius @ The Wardrobe

Curran and I stepped out to The Wardrobe in Leeds last night to see my beloved Perfume Genius. I was sick as hell and it was Monday, but it was well worth getting my lipstick on. He played a fair few from his new album, Too Bright, including my favourite track “Grid,” inciting shrieks of glee from me in that small, quiet, intimate venue. Suffice it to say, that elicited a few smiles from the characteristically warm Leeds crowd. The set was dominated by earlier ballads on his piano (as pictured), making the audience swoon.

Full disclosure, I went to this event with my husband, with whom I’ve been to hundreds and hundreds of shows over our six year history. Still, this one was a little bit different. We spent the whole time unabashedly in each other’s arms — or more accurately, I in his, as I’m considerably shorter — swaying and singing in the packed but hushed venue. Something about it just reminded me of our early dating years in Toronto, bundled up in the dark, peeling off our layers in the bar and settling in to listen intently, almost urgently, our eyes and hearts open wide to some coming beauty. I don’t mean to be hyperbolic or overly sentimental — as anyone who knows Curran and I knows we certainly are not — but there was something about last night that, again, brought me back down to earth in loving him. In less than a month we will have been married for one year and I can honestly step back and say I love him more than I did then, when we were crazy idealistic kids bar hopping in Toronto. It was in the calm, quiet moments in that crowd, Perfume Genius singing, that I remembered the people we were and realised how much we’ve grown together. And I love him more, in those quiet nuanced ways that still make me a believer in everlasting love, even here, on another continent, in seemingly new bodies, inspired by our ever-evolving joint-future. There’s something really wonderful in that; seeing myself with new eyes and seeing him, loving him, always anew.